Environmental History II

Laurens Bekemans is an architect and cofounder of BC architects & studies, an architecture firm, nonprofit research entity, and materials laboratory based in Brussels, as well as, more recently, “BC materials,” an urban mining company that repurposes construction debris. BC comprises BC architects, studies, and materials. BC stands for “Brussels Cooperation” and illustrates how BC has taken root in a place and in the spirit of its inhabitants. Founded in 2012 as a hybrid practice, BC pushes the boundaries of architecture in a pragmatic way. With three distinct legal entities, the team engages in a variety of experimental projects through which it designs bioregional and circular architecture, studies educational and construction processes, and produces new materials using local waste streams such as excavated soil.

Julien Creuzet was in residence at LUMA Arles from november - december 2021 to april - june 2022.

Julien Creuzet is an artist, video maker, performer and poet. He spent most of his childhood in Martinique. These first years in the Caribbean, at the crossroads between the African, Indian and European cultures, have impregnated an oeuvre where the mixture of visions and imaginations has a central place. Through environments made up of composite assemblies, he creates footbridges between these constructs and Elsewhere, between the social realities of here and the forgotten stories of minorities. He represented France for the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Wu Tsang is an award-winning filmmaker and visual artist. Tsang’s work crosses genres and disciplines, from narrative and documentary films to live performance and video installations. Tsang is a MacArthur 'Genius' Fellow, and her projects have been presented at museums, biennials, and film festivals internationally. Awards include 2016 Guggenheim Fellow (Film/Video), 2018 Hugo Boss Prize Nominee, Creative Capital, Rockefeller Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and Warhol Foundation. Tsang received her BFA (2004) from the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and an MFA (2010) from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Currently Tsang works in residence at Schauspielhaus Zurich, as a director of theater with the collective Moved by the Motion.

Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show “World Soup : The Kitchen Show” in 1991, he has curated more than 350 shows.

 Obrist’s recent publications include Ways of Curating (2015), The Age of Earthquakes (2015), Lives of the Artists, Lives of Architects (2015), Mondialité (2017), Somewhere Totally Else (2018) The Athens Dialogues (2018), Maria Lassnig: Letters (2020), Entrevistas Brasileiras: Volume 2 (2020), and 140 Ideas for Planet Earth (2021).

Precious Okoyomon was in residence at LUMA Arles from october to december 2020.

Precious Okoyomon (b. 1993) is a Nigerian-American poet and artist. Their work considers the natural world, histories of migration and racialization, and the pure pleasures of everyday life.

They have had one-person exhibitions at the LUMA Westbau, Zurich; the Museum Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Performance Space New York, New York; the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; The Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid Foundation, Madrid; The Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Ithaca; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz. They were included in the Baltic Triennial 13, Tallinn; the 58th Belgrade Biennial, Belgrade; the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice; the 2022 Okayama Art Summit, Okayama; the 11th Sequences Biennial, Reykjavik; the 2023 Thailand Biennial, Chiang Rai, as well as in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; LUMA Westbau, Zurich; Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; LUMA Arles, Arles; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Nigerian Pavillion, 60th Venice Biennale, Venice; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz. Okoyomon’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt and LUMA Arles. Okoyomon was the 2021 recipient of the Frieze Art Fair Artist Award, as well as the 2021 Chanel Next Art Prize. In 2024, But Did You Die?, their second book of poetry, was co-published by the Serpentine and Wonder Press.

Grégory Quenet is one of the pioneers of environmental history and the environmental humanities in France. Since 2012, he has been a professor of environmental history at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Paris-Saclay). Founder of the French portal for environmental humanities, he organized the eighth European Society for Environmental History Conference in Versailles in 2015. Since its creation in 2024, he has been codirector of the Environmental Humanities research department at the Collège des Bernardins, where he held the Laudato si’: For a New Exploration of the Earth chair from 2021 to 2023. His latest book, Histoire de la pensée écologique (History of Ecological Thought), was published by PUF in May 2025. Since 2021, he has served as a scientific advisor for the Environmental History program at LUMA Arles.